


Glitch in the System: Paris

by SystemGlitch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Vacation, gals bein pals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-15 11:07:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12319809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SystemGlitch/pseuds/SystemGlitch
Summary: Sombra and Widowmaker take a vacation from their vacation for a vacationception in Paris.





	1. One Shot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By E.   
> Baguettes happen.  
> Widowmaker wins the game (which you just lost).

“I want to go to Paris,” Sombra said, laying on her stomach as Widowmaker ran her hands down the hacker’s back, half massage, half excuse to stay in bed longer. It felt nice, after a full week of heavy lifting, moving furniture, painting, and other invigorating physical activity. Her muscles were screaming.

“Paris?” she asked, the gentle pressure of her touch pausing after each rib as she worked her way up Sombra’s body with the methodical patience she employed in most avenues of her affections. “ _Porquoi_?”

Sombra shrugged, wiggling her shoulders for attention when Widowmaker stopped touching her for half a second. “I’ve never seen the Eiffel Tower.”

“ _Vraiment_?”

“Not physically at least. Plenty of pictures. Looks pretty.”

Widowmaker gave the hacker’s back a final press and laid down next to her, running a finger along the warm skin of her neck. “It is nothing special,” she said, looking at Sombra as she stretched out beside her.

“I still wouldn’t mind seeing it. As much as I am loving our time here, it might be nice to take a break from working.”

Widowmaker smirked. “Yes, this  _work_  has been strenuous.”

Sombra grinned, propping herself up on her elbow and leaning forward to give the sniper a long kiss. “What do you say? Show me the city? Rack up more charges on Akande’s business account?”

“Well when you put it like that,” she replied, a laugh hiding behind her words. “I’ll charter us a plane for tomorrow morning.”

“Yessss,” Sombra hissed in victory, flopping over onto her back as Widowmaker reluctantly got out of bed, retrieved her phone, and made good on her promise.

* * *

When they arrived early the next morning, they stopped briefly at the hotel - a small, cozy, privately-owned establishment where their room had been prepared without question. They unpacked quickly, prepared for one, maybe two days should they find reason to stay longer, but otherwise not requiring much time to settle in.

“Damn,” Sombra cursed, frowning as she haphazardly unpacked her supplies.

“What?” Widowmaker asked, looking up from the two identical sweaters she’d brought along, folding them neatly and placing them on the dresser.

“Forgot Oso.”

“Who?”  
  
“My bear.”

“Your teddy bear?” Widowmaker asked, raising an eyebrow.

Sombra shrugged, grinning. “I’ll survive.”

“You named your bear ‘bear’?” Widow asked, eyes narrowed at the hacker.

“Yeah, what about it?”

Widowmaker just shook her head, grabbed a jacket, and slung it over her shoulder. “Shall we?” she asked, holding out her arm for the hacker to take.

“Let’s,” Sombra complied, following her out the door and into the chilly Parisian streets.

At Sombra’s insistence, their first stop was a local boulangerie for breakfast. The bread was still warm when they arrived, and the line not so long as either of them had feared.

“Not as crowded as I’d thought,” Sombra commented, taking her baguette from the serveuse and nodding her thanks. They turned from the counter, passing two sleepy-looking Parisians waiting for their breakfast.

“The chill keeps most residents at home and most tourists away,” Widowmaker said, daintily plucking a chunk of bread from the top of her baguette and chewing it slowly.

Sombra took a giant bite of hers, speaking through a full mouth. “It’s not that cold.”

Widowmaker rolled her eyes. “I can feel you shivering,” she said, wrapping an arm around the hacker’s waist and pulling her closer.

“I’ll be fine,” Sombra said, swallowing the painfully large bite and ignoring the uncomfortable way it slid down her throat. She stood on her toes and kissed the spider. “I don’t even feel it.”

Widowmaker smiled.

They walked down the street, arm in arm, a picture of normalcy that was a poor reflection of their reality. Sombra felt strangely on the spot as the day wore on, their casual companionship suddenly on display outside the safety of the chateau’s thick old walls. Out here, with no stone or pretenses to hide behind, the small flame they’d nurtured into a warm fire felt fragile; threatened. Sombra hadn’t prepared for what might be lurking around ready to blow it out.

Down the street huddled a small crowd of people in the middle of what appeared to be some sort of winter fair. There were a handful of vendors lining the cobbled streets, from food hawkers to those selling fine goods like jewelry, art, or clothing. It appeared to be less catered toward locals and more designed to draw in tourists. There was even a smattering of small games geared toward children with prizes lining the backs of the stalls.

“What’s that?” Sombra asked, immediately drawn to the electricity of the scene. She shoved the final bite of baguette into her mouth and grabbed Widowmaker’s hand, pulling her reluctantly towards it. “I want to see what it is.”

Widowmaker stumbled along behind her, still only halfway through her baguette as they started down the aisle of vendors.

“How positively American,” the sniper commented upon reaching the games. There were only a few, and they were crude in design: a tic-tac-toe board you threw bean bags into, a rickety-looking bowling game, some card games set up on tables, and a sharpshooter challenge with BB guns and plastic bottles.

“Bet you’d wreck the sharpshooter challenge,” Sombra said, grinning as she pressed against the sniper. She was, in fact, rather chilly, despite her assertions to the contrary.

“Perhaps,” Widow replied, eating another bit of baguette.

“You want to play?” Sombra asked, fishing for a few credits in her pocket.

Widowmaker raised an eyebrow incredulously down at the hacker. “Me?”  
  
“I don’t see any other tall, attractive, blue assassin standing nearby that I’d part with my ill-gotten money for,” was Sombra’s response.

“You’re kidding.”  
  
“Ah, nope,” she said, disengaging her arm from the sniper’s to scratch awkwardly at the base of her shaved skull. “Not kidding. Just suggesting enjoying some of the local offerings while we’re out and able to enjoy them.”

“Why don’t you?” Widow suggested, her signature look of disinterest taking its place on a day that didn’t deserve it. “You enjoy games.”

“I enjoy  _rigging_  them, spider.” She gestured at the folks sitting at a table playing blackjack. “I can’t hack a deck of cards.”

“I don’t play games,” was the spider’s response, dispassioned and final.

Sombra sighed, giving up. It wasn’t a big deal, really, but it bothered her that Widow was still letting her programming dictate stupid things like what she did in her spare time. “Sure, you don’t,” she said, shrugging. “But you could.”

“What do you mean?”  
  
“What I mean is that there’s nothing telling you you  _can’t_  do something you normally wouldn’t. There’s no magic barrier between you and the rest of the world, Widow.” She hugged her arms around her body, feeling grumpy, and not wanting to be on such a nice day. “The only thing stopping you is you.”

Widowmaker stared at her, face impassive in the way the hacker couldn’t read.

“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” she said, turning and walking off in the direction of the nearest restroom, leaving a sullen Widowmaker by herself next to the unassuming crowd of laughing Parisians.

On her way back, she felt bad for being so cross with the spider, her discomfort with being away from the chateau giving her frustration the upper hand over her patience. She passed a small cafe on her way, pausing as she walked by before doubling back to pick up cocoa for the two of them.

“ _Avec cannelle_?” the woman behind the counter asked, and Sombra smiled back.

“ _Oui_ ,” she replied, watching as the serveuse nodded and tapped a spoonful of cinnamon into each one. Funny, she thought, how such small details came to hold such importance. It was too nice a day to be upset. Especially with the spider. Widow could be deeply vexing on a consistent basis, but Sombra didn’t  _like_  being annoyed with her. She just wished she could embrace spontaneity at times. She wondered if she’d been like this before or if this stubborn reluctance to branch out from her self-imposed comfort zone was Talon’s doing.

At this point she supposed it didn’t much matter. It was a small frustration in the grand scheme of their interactions, and Sombra would not let it be her breath that snuffed out the candle they’d lit together.

Holding the hot beverages in her hands, she made her way back to the street faire, prepared to apologize and suggest they do something decidedly  _not_  exciting, like visit a museum, or take a slow stroll along the Seine. When she returned, however, Widowmaker was standing by the game booth looking both uncomfortable and deeply pleased with herself, a collection of tourists and natives gathering awkwardly to the side as they stared at her.

“What happened?” she asked, watching the throng of people murmuring to the side, the game runner looking both antsy as well as excited. “Hell, Widow, please tell me you didn’t kill anyone,” she groaned nervously under her breath.

“I won the game,” Widowmaker said, nodding at the sharpshooter booth. “I won it ten times.”

“ _Mademoiselle est magnifique_ ,” he said, gesturing at the array of wide-eyed stuffed animals behind him. “ _Faites votre choix_.”

Sombra looked back at the sniper, feeling something unfamiliar creeping inside her. It was something like pride, but not for herself.

“You pick,” Widow said, taking one of the cocoa cups from her to free up the hacker’s hands. “You left your bear in Venice.”

Sombra had no control over her grin at that point, filled in equal parts with deep amusement, surprise, and that soft, warm glow the spider kept stoking within her.

“ _La_ ,” she said, pointing at a blue and black stuffed spider with big, dumb eyes and a smile incongruous with the animal it was supposed to represent. The man nodded and handed it to her, shooing them away once the trade was complete.

“Please do not name it Araña,” Widow said as Sombra tucked the spider under her arm.

“Deal.” Sombra looked up at Widowmaker, the woman pointedly not looking back as she tried in vain to hide her own slow smile. Sombra pressed herself against her arm as they turned to leave, and the sniper wrapped it around her shoulders, walking side by side as they sipped their cocoa.

“ _Elle est magnifique, indeed_ ,” Sombra murmured into her cup, thinking that the day was off to a very nice start after all.


	2. A View to a Kill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By K.  
> Too many stairs happen.

At Widowmaker’s behest, they held off on the Eiffel tower until evening. **  
**

“We can go back tomorrow morning, if you’d like,” she conceded, arm in arm with the hacker as they strolled leisurely along the raised bank of the Seine. “But the first time? After sunset. You will thank me.”

“But  _why_?” Sombra asked, incredulous and well over the sniper’s cryptic avoidance of further explanation.

Slowing to a stop, Widowmaker cast a long, appraising glance about them as if searching for an answer along the riverside and the buildings beyond. A moment passed, two, before she set a hand lightly against the small of the shorter woman’s back and turned her toward the city proper.

Before them, civilian life carried on as usual, humans and omnics milling from place to place, indistinct in their sheer number and made even moreso in the constancy of their movement. To anyone else, it was a crowd; to her, a network of interconnected details, all glaringly obvious beneath the watch of an eye trained for single targets. Up close, she could discern the little tells and tics that colored their character: fingers in bags they didn’t own, warm smiles shared between couples, little kindnesses and slights in equal abundance.

“It’s nice during the day,  _oui_ ; a good view. But, at night? It’s different,” she explained, leaning in to speak warmly just behind Sombra’s ear. “The light against the dark - you watch everything in vignettes, good and bad, and it all looks  _exactly the same_.”

It was true: from a distance, those individual variables blended into something else, removed and beautifully neutral in their simultaneous homo and heterogeneity. That dichotomy provided an impartiality she found comfortable and familiar.  Were she anyone else - anyone more innately empathetic or prone to hesitation when it came to taking lives - she suspected that added element of dehumanization would better facilitate her ability to do her job. Bearing no such burden, it served simply and effectively as a quaint macrocosm of the way she saw the world: a window through which to watch the chapters of others’ stories unfold.

Glancing over her shoulder, Sombra searched Widowmaker’s ever-impassive expression for further illumination and found, unsurprisingly, nothing. Despite the little changes she saw in the spider with every passing day, Widowmaker remained mostly unreadable beyond the occasional shift in tone. Greater provocation was generally required for more than that, so much they both questioned independent of one another whether she was putting it on for familiarity’s sake or if that default was simply there to stay.

“What?” Widowmaker asked, her response to that lingering glance little more than the quirk of an eyebrow.

The hacker’s vague agitation gave way to a resigned but bemused smirk. “That is some flowery-ass shit if I’ve ever heard it, spider,” she chuckled, stumbling a few steps forward with the gentle shove she received as a retort.

“Like I said: you will thank me,” the assassin repeated coolly, stifling the smile threatening the corner of her mouth.

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll see.”

* * *

To no one’s concern, the afternoon moved at a snail’s pace, their aimless wandering punctuated by Sombra’s sporadic inquiries regarding a given building or landmark. Widowmaker served as the reluctant tour guide, recalling historical odds and ends as she was able. The details came less readily than she preferred, particularly given her time in Paris over the preceding few years was limited to rooftop traversals over a handful of hours at most. Still, the salient points remained, occasionally accompanied by others more obscure - those ineffaceable bits of information borne of grim history or urban legend, their veracity questionable but intriguing all the same.

With the aid of the Métro, their exploration took them across the Seine toward the nexus of streets which encompassed the Palais Garnier, its neo-baroque ornamentation looming well overhead. Widowmaker quietly hoped it would not warrant their stopping, acknowledging with passive frustration the creeping dryness in her throat and the way her heart turned suddenly to lead as they approached. Despite the sniper’s efforts to feign interest in anything and everything but the Palais,  Sombra lead them on a straight shot toward the home of the Paris Opera Ballet, slowing toward a stop adjacent its front and casting her gaze upwards.

“I know this place,” she muttered, eyes narrowed as she scanned its architecture for the singular detail which might reveal the source of her recognition. “It was  _in_  something. I know it.”

Widowmaker followed the line of the other woman’s sight, golden eyes surveying the the building with the pointed curiosity typically reserved for marks as she considered the memories it dragged from beneath the surface to the shores of consciousness. She craned her neck, tracing the lines of friezes and columns and its golden avant-corps; among them, she could recall countless rehearsals, years of ribbon and tulle and stage lights and the orchestra’s uniform movement setting the pace for her own. Sometimes, bolting from balcony to balcony under enemy fire, she remembered those moments, comparing the synchronicity between stage and pit and the measured, calculating movements by which murder could effortlessly mirror art and finding amid the comparison a grace in conflict she never expected.

She embodied that grace here as part of the  _corps de ballet_ ; she embodied it still, leveraging the precision and fluidity of movement to equally beautiful but lethal means. Somehow, recognizing that consistency among the trajectory of her life made the other memories the opera house evoked - roses, Gérard, a handful of faces she now counted among Talon’s opposition - more bearable in how fateful they felt.

“Any ideas?” she asked, willing the unsteadiness of her own voice away as she leaned over to Sombra.

“Some stage show,” the hacker shrugged. “Broadway kind.”

“ _Fantôme_?”

“Mm, yeah. That sounds right.”

“Drivel,” Widowmaker quipped. “Leroux’s writing deserved better. They kept a box for him here, you know. For a while.”

“The writer?”

“The phantom,” the sniper replied cryptically. Sombra eyed her with a combination of disbelief and, somewhere beyond it, concern - recognition of the faintest wavering of her partner’s tone, the ghost of tiredness that passed over her features in fleeting seconds.

“One: bullshit,” she started. Then, more gently: “Two: you okay?”

With a slow inhale, Widowmaker watched the steady flow of visitors coming and going. Among them, she could almost discern her own ghost, duffel bag over one shoulder as she passed through the crowd.

“I danced here,” she explained. “I was supposed to perform  _La Sylphide_ ; I still remember the routines. I was  _so_  excited.”

That admission somehow lightened, even if only incrementally, the heavy sadness she felt like a stone in her chest, dead and cold - the shadow of a dream, tucked between the bones of a woman dead in everything but form. Until recently, she could neither recognize nor understand the inkling of unfulfillment she harbored in the wake of its destruction. In the wake of that comprehension, she couldn’t help but wondered whether it truly mattered - after all, she was no longer a ballerina, and the Palais was no longer her stage. Then, her performances were for hundreds; now they were for the world - who hadn’t seen replayed footage of Tekhartha Mondatta’s assassination?

In a way, it felt as though she had simply mastered a different medium.

As Sombra pushed her fingers past the edge of her coat pocket to intertwine them with her own, Widowmaker allowed herself that appreciation, grim as it was, and with it felt some small weight lift itself from her shoulders.

“This is… good,” she said, giving the hacker’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Thank you,  _cherie_.”

* * *

Despite the cold, they picnicked in the park adjacent the tower, watching the sun’s early winter descent with a bottle of wine and the casual banter that came more readily to the both of them as the days progressed. Some topics were fleeting, their subjects particularly tender: Sombra’s pitiful handful of family memories, the expectation of perfection which governed a young Amélie Lacroix’s adolescence; others were easier: the hacker’s love and leverage of cybernetics, Widowmaker’s reading habit and the quiet exchange of literature she shared with Akande subsequent his freedom. Few of these exchanges were of importance, per se, but both rendered them a degree of attention and sincere curiosity that sometimes saw a particular topic prolonged beyond a half-hour or more.

The setting of the sun and the disappearance of its final rays brought with it the inevitable drop in temperature which pushed Sombra closer, shoving as much of herself as she was able beyond the open front of the assassin’s coat in an attempt at warmth that was as vehemently lazy as it was innately futile. Widowmaker laughed at her efforts, a thin, bemused smile haunting the corners of her mouth as she climbed to her feet and offered her coat to her partner.

“It will do you more good than me,” she insisted, ignoring Sombra’s protestations as she pushed the garment in question into her hands with a firmness which offered no compromise. “Do not be a child.”

“ _Fine_ ,” the hacker grunted, tossing it over her shoulders. Tilting her head, Widowmaker stared at her a long moment as that same, fey smile not only returned, but blossomed into something broader and brighter.

“What?” Sombra asked, pointedly aware the sniper’s smile was entirely at her expense.

“Two coats,” Widowmaker snickered. “Very in this season.”

Turning up her nose in a fit of mock insult, Sombra gathered their trash in a single armful and turned on her heel, her colleague in tow as they made their way to the edge of the park, depositing the remaining odds and ends of their dinner the garbage as they cleared its borders. She slowed to a stop before the east and west legs which served as half of its foundation, craning her neck in a vain attempt to take in its full height.

“We are not taking the stairs,” she declared as Widowmaker grasped her by the hand and pulled her wordlessly toward the nearest entrance. “Really. We’re not.”

“Oh?” the sniper asked over her shoulder. “I can carry you if you get tired,” she offered flatly, leaving the statements intent as either sincere or a joke purposefully ambiguous.

“We are not. taking. the stairs,” Sombra repeated, pointing upward at the latticework looming above them to further reiterate her statement.

Rolling her eyes, the taller woman took her hand anew and doubled back toward the entrance. “We have to take the stairs to the second floor; if we queue, we will be here a week,” she explained. “There is only a lift to the observation deck, if I recall; no stairs. I promise.”

“Fine,” Sombra agreed. “How many stairs to the second floor?”

“About seven hundred.”

“You are the actual worst.”

“I am aware,  _cherie_.”

* * *

They spent their first hour on the topmost observation deck in relative silence, moving slowly about its perimeter as they took in the city from nearly 81 stories above. Paris sprawled beneath them, a patchwork quilt of buildings silhouetted by hundreds of thousands of lights. Each collection of radiances contained somewhere within the field of their glow some small microcosm of life, their details indistinguishable at their height. From where they stood, fleeting interactions between two humans, three, sometimes more bore remarkable likenesses to one another; it was difficult to tell which meetings were happy, sad, welcome, or otherwise, but they were all beautiful amid the interplay of light and shadow the city offered them from below.

Eventually, Sombra excused herself to the first of the tower’s two uppermost floors, leaving her partner in search of a brief reprieve from the cold amid the considerably more crowded interior deck. Widowmaker simply nodded her understanding, losing track of the minutes which comprised her absence as she leaned against the railing and considered the sight before her. She had expected it to be more difficult than this, had expected it would evoke the same, sharp pinpricks of feeling her family’s effects or wedding photo had. After all, it was home - had been home for almost her entire young life. Yet, as she stood over all of Paris, she couldn’t help but feel that  faint notion of catharsis she had earlier that day: the same gratification she felt when she won the asinine sharpshooter game no fewer than ten times, the same closure she felt at the Palais that afternoon. The same, small weight, suddenly gone and remarkable in its absence.

It felt like saying goodbye, bittersweet but necessary and, ultimately, good.

“All right, all right. It’s  _pretty_.”

Sombra’s voice, smug but amused as she returned to the sniper’s side, heralded by the ding of the elevator behind them as she looped an arm through Widowmaker’s.

“I know” the assassin replied airily, leaning in to plant a single, soft kiss against the shaved side of Sombra’s head. “It is how I see everything. In a way, I take it with me everywhere I go. A… fond memory, I suppose.”

Giving her arm a gentle squeeze with her own, the hacker nodded her understanding despite her visibly straining to ignore a collection of people gathering at the elevator behind them, their murmuring growing markedly louder. “Same reason I like cities. Close, lots of people; I can disappear or I can be the center of attention. My choice. Feels like home.”

Behind them, a gentleman cursed his displeasure, pressing the button to the lift repeatedly as the small crowd milled about him. Widowmaker offered the gathering a single, curious glance over one shoulder: where a light should have illuminated the button, there was only unresponsive darkness.

“Sombra,” she said flatly, returning her attention to the city stretching about them on every side. “Did you hack the tower?“

From the corner of her eye, she could see the faintest curl of the other woman’s lips, a flash of amusement and the stifling of laughter.

“You  _didn’t_.”

“I  _might_  have,” Sombra chuckled.

“ _Sombra_ ,” the sniper chided her, shoving an elbow into her partner’s side, the gesture softened by her own furtive amusement. “Why?”

“Well, first of all: because I could,” Sombra explained, resting her head against Widowmaker’s arm. “Other than that? You seemed happy.”

Sighing, Widowmaker slid that same arm about the hacker’s waist, pulling her closer. “You are ridiculous. Thank you.”


End file.
